


I don't wanna be your friend I wanna kiss your neck

by supercalifragilistichespiralidoso



Series: Into Oblivion [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Quinlan has a small part, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 11:05:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18030542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supercalifragilistichespiralidoso/pseuds/supercalifragilistichespiralidoso
Summary: "It's the way Anakin takes a step closer and he's not smiling right now, but he's focused, anxious, perfect, making Obi-Wan's lungs constrict"





	I don't wanna be your friend I wanna kiss your neck

**Author's Note:**

> No beta-ed  
> English is not my first language  
> Title from Fallingforyou by The 1975

 

**I don't wanna be your friend, I wanna kiss your neck**

 

//

 

Anakin is smiling and that is the first thing that Obi-Wan sees after hours of words on a datapad.

The rare times that Obi-Wan allows himself to think, he thinks that Anakin will probably die smiling - a blaster bolt right in the middle of his back or trapped in a collapsing ship trying to find a way to save everyone else and he will smile at death itself or, well, more probably, at Obi-Wan and that will be the end. 

He's smiling and while there are a lot of things that can put him in a good mood, Obi-Wan knows perfectly well which one it is at the moment - on Coruscant, after a long mission and on the way of another - like he knows that he spends too much time pondering where and when he did horribly wrong along the road in regards of his former padawan.

Anakin flops down in the empty spot on the couch and looks at Obi-Wan, smiling, long legs crossed at the ankles, expression unguarded. 

"Still working" he asks, but it's not really a question - Anakin obviously knows better than sounding surprised after more than twelve years, but not enough to not at least point it out - or maybe, it's exactly because it is enough. 

"Someone has to" Obi-Wan replies, shifting, and he is the one guarded. 

There's no bite in the tone, not at all, like there's no risk that Anakin will misunderstand - it's just the way they work. 

Anakin doesn't speak, though. And that has always made Obi-Wan uncomfortable: a silent Anakin is a dangerous Anakin, at least where Obi-Wan is concerned - it never misses to make him feel vulnerable in a way, like Anakin's trying to figure out what passes in Obi-Wan's mind and is starting to finally understand, years of training be damned. 

It's fleeting - in a not-so-distant past Obi-Wan would have massaged his temples at Anakin's short attention span, whreas right now he considers it a small mercy (that he will worry about again the moment they're back on the field). 

"A break would do you good" Anakin says and reaches for the other datapads on the coffee table in front of them. 

The datapads has been lined up with care, painstakingly, by Obi-Wan because, in his mind, chaos is Anakin and he doesn't need any more excuses to think of him as it already is - smiling or not, focused, anxious, impossibly perfect. 

Obi-Wan says nothing. He doesn't think he can open his mouth and not say something wrong, something he will regret immediately because it is what it is and he can't possibly make mistakes. Any more mistakes, that is. 

The rare times that Obi-Wan allows himself to think, he thinks of how it would be to ignore everything - his upbringing, his duty, the Code. He allows himself to think and he feels like on the edge of a cliff, like that tiny fraction of time right before a jump into hyperspace where everything is still yet moving.

He came close to leave the Order behind in the past - one word all he needed - but he didn't in the end. That would have been a mistake, albeit not as disastrous as the one he's not likely to commit nowadays. 

"Master" Anakin calls him and it's wrong of him to still use that word, he's not been his Master anymore for three years - if Obi-Wan was allowed to hate, he would hate the honorific epithet for it is yet another reminder of what he wants but shouldn't and can't ever have. 

"Something happened?" Anakin continues, the tone not really alarmed but slightly alert, bless his moodswings, like he's ready to fight everyone and everything that has dared to make his master upset.

The devotion, the fondness, the short distance between them, so short that Obi-Wan could kriff it all and just kiss the damn stupid right there and then. 

Again, it just irks Obi-Wan even more. 

"Nothing happened, Anakin" he says, maybe a bit brusque, and takes the datapad away from him by the opposite corner where his former padawan's fingers are. 

He leaves him there, without looking and shields tight in place, conscious of the gaze burning the back of his head, in favor of a trivial retrat to his room that makes him feel a blushing padawan all over again after a rare argument with Qui-Gon. 

//

One thing is always been clear to Obi-Wan: the less you try to show on your face, the more you reveal of your soul. Every morning he looks at himself in the mirror and straightens his tunic, combs his hair, trims his beard regularly and all he can think about is that the order, the stoicism, the control are, yes, all parts of who he is at this point, but also a desperate attempt at concealing the extent of his mistakes, of what he's done and what he's itching to do. 

Sometimes - most of the times actually - Obi-Wan's paranoid nature convinces him that he's not that subtle, that everyone knows his little secret (except Anakin, that is, because somehow someone so powerful is also strangely, selectively blind to what happens around him and that should be a relief, but there are moments that he can't help but think that things would be so much easier if only Anakin knew - the next moment he thinks he can weep with joy for the other Jedi's oblivousness).

Ahsoka surely knows. There's no mistaking in her watchful eyes. And in that eyes, where Obi-Wan expects to find reproach or disgust, he finds acceptance - but maybe, he muses, he's that subtle and she doesn't really know. 

The Council doesn't know. Of that he's sure, consciously. Or he wouldn't be on a ship on his way to this remote planet in the Outer Rim - while love is encouraged, attachment is not and Obi-Wan has always understood that tenet to a tee - after all he almost left the Order once, brushed the Dark Side in the fight against Darth Maul and he has no doubt the he would resort to extreme measures to help Anakin, should the need arise. 

No Council member knows, though at times Master Yoda's ears twitch at the wrong moment and Master Windu's eyes stay too long on him during a meeting and Obi-Wan feels doomed. 

Of Quinlan Vos knowing, unfortunately, he is one hundred percent certain. And Quinlan was, is, and always will be a pain in the ass. 

"You should tell him" he says. 

They're on the  _Resolute_ , surrounded by a few clones though none of them is paying any attention to the two Jedi. 

You should tell him, Quinlan's said and it's so out of the blue that Obi-Wan has no idea of what his friend is talking about. The  _what_ and the  _who_ die instantly on his tongue when he follows the line of sight the leads to Anakin. And Anakin is half-smiling with Rex, that grin that always leaves Obi-Wan wanting to slap him in the face or-

Don't, he tells himself. 

Deep down inside, Obi-Wan knows he is a good Jedi, or tries to be - there is no such a thing as the perfect Jedi and only the Sith deal in absolutes anyway; he doesn't envy Quinlan's ability (or Qui-Gon's, back when he was alive) to be so carefree, he just wishes, every now and then, to be a little bit selfish. 

"I don't know what you're talking about" Obi-Wan replies, eyes down again on trajectories and calculations; mind lingering on Anakin and Quinlan and himself.

He can't tell, of course he can't. 

Quinlan ignores him. 

"The brat might surprise you" he says and than proceeds to destroy what little faith Obi-Wan has in his mental health by simply calling Anakin. "Obi-Wan needs to talk to you." 

 //

Anakin arrives too soon and Obi-Wan's still debating whether to chase after Quinlan for what he's done and for the half-murmured words he's said before leaving, something about Obi-Wan having a type. 

Obi-Wan wants to groan. "Nothing" he says, refusing to even look at Anakin thorugh his eyelashes because he's tired and the whole thing is suddenly too much. "Check these" he adds as an afterthought, passing the younger Jedi his notes - Anakin may be oblivious but he's far from stupid.

And then General of the GAR Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Master and member of the High Council, is running again, but if there is one person that Obi-Wan is good at running to and from, that is Anakin. 

The corridor is deserted, except for one clone that salutes him and then repeats the gesture again at someone over Obi-Wan's shoulder and Obi-Wan has no doubt in his mind that that second salute is directed at Anakin. He knows even without looking - he can sense him perfectly. 

"Obi-Wan" Anakin is saying. 

Obi-Wan's stomach is heavy and his spine is knotted all along its lenght. One more turn and they will be in front of their quarters' door, alone like they never are anymore and not just because Obi-Wan doesn't permit it - on this mission there's Quinlan, on most of the others there are Ahsoka and Rex and Cody and their clones, on Coruscant there are other distractions. 

"Master" Anakin calls. 

Obi-Wan almost snaps and tells not to call him that, not now, but he doesn't. He just closes his eyes for a single moment, too brief to be really helpful, and then turns and observe Anakin's expression. 

Anakin's never been good at hiding his emotion - not as a child, when Master Yoda sensed his fear all too easily, not as a teenager with that tremendous crush of his on a certain senator, and now as an adult it seems like he doesn't even make an effort. Though maybe it's Obi-Wan that can read him like an open book - a part of him suggests that after almost twelve years (and not even twelve simple years) it was to be expected; the other traitorous part is convinced that it's a consequence of Obi-Wan's fascination (let's call it that) with the younger Jedi. 

Most assuredly both are true, the second being a testament to how Obi-Wan messed it all up.

Right now Anakin is looking at him like he's seeing Obi-Wan for the very first time, scanning every inch of skin to find Force-knows-what. Answers, probably. 

"What is it?" he asks. 

"Nothing" Obi-Wan answers, each elbow in hands, face schooled. 

The downside of knowing a person for a long time is that the other person gets to learn about yourself in return. Anakin knows Obi-Wan - how he ticks and thinks, his telltales. And right now he knows Obi-Wan's lying. 

It's not nothing. 

It's everything. 

It's the way somehow Anakin always succeeds at making everything about himself, the way he's crawled under Obi-Wan's skin a long time ago and planted himself there with no intention to leave, the way Obi-Wan was just barely a Knight too young and too inexperienced to train the kriffing Chosen One and Anakin just a child that latched on to the next best thing wasn't slavery, the way both maybe were bound to make a mess. 

It's the way they're both Jedi and have sworn an oath, the way Obi-Wan's been Anakin's Master and the unsevered training bond should have been just a useful mean to fight better and not to keep each other safe, it's the sixteen years between them.  

It's the way Anakin takes a step closer and he's not smiling right now, but he's focused, anxious, perfect, making Obi-Wan's lungs constrict. 

The devotion, the fondness, the short distance between them, so short that Obi-Wan could kriff it all and just kiss the damn stupid right there and then. 

And he is too tired now to even care, so he does it. 

Obi-Wan grabs a handful of Anakin's tunic and yanks him down (the slight jabs at the difference in height somewhere in the back of his skull) and it's fine now with Anakin's blue eyes firmly shut and his mouth on Obi-Wan's. 

 //

Anakin mouths a  _finally_ against Obi-Wan's lips and when he draws his head back a little, he is smiling and that is the first thing that Obi-Wan sees. And he leans in again. 


End file.
